Windmill hunting

Zaanse Schans Travel Blog

I had two leads for windmills, one was from the hostel and the other was from my guide book. I knew I could count on my guide book for good windmills, but the other site was quite close to Amsterdam, so Ruth and I went to Zaanse Schans first.

The train pulled into the little town and we got off, a little perplexed. We were in the middle of a town, where were the windmills? There were no signs, so we just wandered over to where we could find some water. (Windmills need water to run, after all!) Sure enough, after some walking we did find a couple windmills there. The area was actually set up to be a little touristy, and they had some cheese shops and souvenir shops and such. That turned me off a little, but the area was neat to walk around in for a little while. I don't think I would reccommend it to anyone, though.

We could smell chocolate in the air though, and found a facility that makes chocolate. Talking to one of the locals though, we discovered that we could not get a tour. Bummer. Ruth had to go back to Amsterdam, so I dropped her off there before continuing on to Kinderdijk.